[MLB-WIRELESS] PCMCIA - PCI Adapters (PLX)

[Jason Hecker]

Hi all,

I got me a Belken $99.95 5V PCMCIA->PCI adapter on the weekend from Harvey 
Norman so I could get my Cisco PCMCIA card up and running.  To my chagrin, 
it's based on the PLX PCI9052 chip, which means it's no a true PCMCIA 
adapter.  This chip is designed for ISA->PCI bus conversion so companies 
could redeploy their ISA designs to PCI with not much fuss.  PCMCIA is very 
similar to ISA so with some jiggerypokery, PCMCIA can be made to work with 
this chip as well, in a fashion.  It's good enough for the wireless 
cards.  What the PLX card does though is map the ISA bus into PCI memory 
space, the essence being that you need specialised PLX drivers written for 
every single PCMCIA card out there.

The Belken adapter is for the Belken wireless PCMCIA card so has Windows 
drivers to suit that combination.  In Linux, PLX drivers are slowly being 
written.  If you have an Intersil 2.x based chipset in your wireless card 
(many Taiwanese models, Samsung, DLink, Netgear etc) then using the 
linux-wlan (www.linux-wlan.com) drivers with PLX support should see you 
right (I give no guarantees).  Apparently there is a beta orinoco_plx 
driver floating about too so your Orinoco cards may work as well.  As for 
Cisco cards, forget it at this stage.

The Linux PCMCIA card services package distinctly says it doesn't support 
PLX adapters, and I doubt it will due to the nature of the PLX device.

As an aside, I have the D-Link DWL-520 (proper PCI) working just fine with 
the Linux-Wlan drivers.

I don't know the quality of Belken wireless gear, but Harvey Norman has 
some good prices for the stuff.  USB 802.11b was about $250 from memory.

jASON


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